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Reading the article, it's no surprise at the lop-sided vote

"Before the House vote, which was a lopsided 409 to 2, Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) held a press conference on Capitol Hill with John Walsh, the host of America's Most Wanted and Ernie Allen, head of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children."

I'm impressed that any congress-crawler had the fortitude to vote against it after a build-up like that.

As a gun owner, I'm accustomed to badly written legislation with ocean-wide latitude for selective enforcement. But this is just insane:

"The definition of which images qualify as illegal is expansive. It includes obvious child pornography, meaning photographs and videos of children being molested. But it also includes photographs of fully clothed minors in overly "lascivious" poses, and certain obscene visual depictions including a "drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting." (Yes, that covers the subset of anime called hentai)."

So copying a file from my own server to my laptop, if done on an open wireless network, would become a crime if someone didn't like it. That's just plain sick.

Ever since the 'Net exploded, the powers that be have been trying to figure out some way to crush it. Don't be surprised at the lengths they will go, or the angles they will try, until something finally sticks, the same way everything else has been infringed upon.

Probably a lot of congressman/women (that's what they are called I believe?) are afraid to vote against this rule, since their opponents might make them look like 'child-lovers' or so I guess. Everybody understands there have to be law against these forms of abuses, but the problem is the type of laws being made themselves can also be an and to abuse themselves.

For example, in my country it is forbidden for child pornography to be on your computer, and in practice that means you cannot become a TOR-node, because you are not sure what passes by. Also, the initiatives of a 'community of people who give open WiFi to the other people of that same community' will be impossible because of this kind of legislation; you just cannot be sure what is passing over the WiFi.

However, with respect to 'content piracy' I see a tendency in my own country where they stopped going after the home-users and aimed at the companies who host the bittorrent-sites. That's probably the better way to go.

Quoting:>You mean when someone who agrees with your points and politics reminds you that regardless of the story your comments have literally zero to do with opensource or linux?

Strictly speaking, neither does the story, but...

Hmm, that indeed seems to be the problem in my opinion. Since I'm an editor myself, I tried to kept the politics-level in my reaction as low as possible, but the only possible TOS-respecting solution would be not to discuss the article maybe?

Azerthoth, At the point in the conversation that you say 'TOS'(which I assume you meant as a "TOS Violation') there had been nothing said that I considered to be in violation of the TOS. If you believe that a thread is in violation of the TOS please e-mail me directly. I will assess whether or not it is in violation and take the appropriate action from there.

Now the ensuing argument resulting from Azer's post is another matter..

Bob_Robertson, Azerthoth's 'TOS' post was his opinion, not LXer's. No offense to Azer but he does not speak for LXer, I do.

I thought the conversation was fine until everyone got mad about Azer's 'TOS' post. As far as I could tell it was about politics, not a battle of political opinions. Which would have been a violation in my eyes.

As long as there is still a chance to get back to that conversation I see no reason to delete this thread. But if all of you are going to keep spitting fire at each other then I will.

Well, up the azerthoth's TOS comment and Bob's response, the commentary was entirely about the proposed law and it's likely consequences.

My comment was a direct (though admittedly tongue in cheek) response to hkwint's comment, as was Dino's.

Bob's comment reflected his political views, but that's impossible to avoid. Hkwint's reflected the politics of his region, but ditto.

Since the legislation directly affects software such as tor, freenet, bittorrent, and frostwire; I think the free software connection is clear, so not posting the article seems unreasonable.

That's the root of the problem. In general, when the story in question deals with laws and legal matters, a certain amount of political viewpoint is going to enter the comments and cannot be avoided. As long as the comments don't degenerate into a flamewar, that's probably OK. The only feasible alternative is to not cover law and legal matters at all, and that's worse for LX'er than allowing some leeway.

The same is true for articles covering the use/misuse of free software by religious entities wrt religion.

It's a tricky balancing act, Scott. I'm sure you'll do your best and I at least will try to be patient with the inevitable missteps.

I made a point to comment in the TOS thread here http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/26436/ and it appears azeroth may be referring to the type of violation I was highlighting. Therefore, I should, I suppose, comment here as well (although I have no desire to.)

Upon reviewing Bob's and Hans' comments I fail to see the violation. It appears to me that their comments are relevant to context and free of political bias.

Please note: I am claiming to be neither a judge of, nor an expert on these matters. I would not post here were it not that my earlier comment in another thread may have inspired azeroth's TOS comment here. Feel free to ignore this post.

>I agree that the slight political leanings expressed in the comments do not constitute a TOS violation though.

In this context, even not-so-slight political leanings should not be a TOS violation.

Try a thought experiment, just for fun -- after all, if it's good enough for Einstein...

A major presidential candidate in the US comes out in opposition to free copying of software in any form -- including music, video, and computer programs. As a matter of national security, she proposes a "source" license -- computer source code will be illegal, except when access is controlled by government licensed monitors. No source code will be permitted outside of designated trusted serving facilities. All violations will be felonies, and 2 years is the minimum federal prison time.

Would that be an appropriate topic for LXer?
Could it be discussed without SERIOUS -- even vitriolic -- political discussion, dare I say, passions?

> Could it be discussed without SERIOUS -- even vitriolic -- political discussion, dare I say, passions?

Probably not. Fortunately, I doubt there would be much disagreement among the posters.

That's the tradeoff Scott has to weigh when making his decisions. It's impossible to cover politics (including elections, legislation, candidate positions, and such) without having politics enter the discussion. LX'er has to either decide not to cover those subjects or allow some leeway when they come up. Deciding when that leeway has been passed is always the difficult part.

And, as I noted, the same is true for religions. If someone redid Hot Babe (which is already treacherous ground for some) to have "inappropriate" pictures of Mohammad, how do you think the religious leaders of the Muslim world would react? Would that reaction be appropriate fare for LX'er, and what would the discussions be like?

jdixon's right about the 'she' part. That would cause it to get the yank from me. To a lot of people it would be a veiled sexist attack. Its not like there are more than one 'she' presidential candidates out there right now.

And being one of the two people who voted against this bill. At what point does it become reasonable for a member to conclude publicly on LXer that Ron Paul is likely the most FOSS friendly candidate available? Or would it ever be such?

Dino:

I don't think Elizabeth Dole ever lead in the Republican polls. I could be wrong, of course. But, as no votes have yet been cast in this election, you are correct.

As a non-native speaker may I comment that that's not a bug, but an unfortunate feature of the English language? In my mother tongue it would be definite "he", because "kandydat" is a masculine noun (the feminine form would be "kandydatka"). No confusion. And I always found this 'she' part strange, but I thought it's some sort of an unwritten rule...

>A question -- If a candidate did come out for such things, are you saying it would be wrong to identify the candidate? If "she" is wrong, then the candidate's name would certainly be worse.

The whole thing with the 'she' part is how it was used in your particular sentence. Using 'she' instead of just her name, the way you said it, made it sound bad. That's how I intrepeted it from the context it was used in.

I would say sticking to using just their name would be best. Referring to someone by their name really can't be construed negatively, can it?

>And being one of the two people who voted against this bill. At what point does it become reasonable for a member to conclude publicly on LXer that Ron Paul is likely the most FOSS friendly candidate available? Or would it ever be such?

I would say it is very reasonable, and ok, for someone to say that. But if it is used as a springboard to expound the poster's political opinions, which almost always stray from the subject of the article, then it is a TOS violation.

What is said in response to their post is not the fault of the original poster as long as they don't get dragged into a political opinion 'deathmatch' which most certainly will have strayed from the subject of the article that the thread should be about.

> Referring to someone by their name really can't be construed negatively, can it?

Very strange, given that my hypothetical referred to nobody at all, that you would construe "she" negatively. In my world, "shes" are every bit as wonderful as "hes". In some contexts (from my standpoint, at least), "shes" are even more wonderful.

English has no neutral gender form, though some have tried to create one. In English, the masculine form always includes the feminine by default, unless context or explicit usage indicates otherwise. Thus, when we say he, we are not limiting the gender to men, but when we say she, we are limiting the gender to women. Thus, Dino's usage of she above limits his hypothetical case to the women running. There's nothing wrong with that (it's as valid as any other hypothetical), but since it's a position which is certain to be unpopular among the readership of LXer, it could be taken as an unjustified statement of the likely position of the currently leading female candidate, and thus an attack on her.

Of course, having read Dino's posts both here and elsewhere for a number of years, I have no doubt the usage of she was deliberate on his part to illustrate a point, as it would be in my case if I used it.

It seems that while Some People here have a bias towards political discussions, I'm drawn to linguistic discussions. I wonder if all programmers do ;)

Quoting:"He" is the pronoun to use when one does not know.

Hmmm, I remember one quote from Civilisation II: "Your spy [completed the mission]. SHE has returned to the nearest city." Does that mean that the authors of Civ II were trying to be politically correct? ;)
Wikipedia (to which I went before I wrote my post above) says that "singular they" seems to be the way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they). Even Shakespeare used it! ;)
BTW: it's somewhat funny to see that when examples from non-English languages are needed, Wikipedia usually gives them in Polish ;)

Quoting:Thus, when we say he, we are not limiting the gender to men, but when we say she, we are limiting the gender to women.

Quoting:BTW: it's somewhat funny to see that when examples from non-English languages are needed, Wikipedia usually gives them in Polish

Nope, WP doesn't, Polish programmers who are drawn to linguistic discussions do and probably put them there;) But beware, this whole 'she' discussion is in fact off-topic (though that isn't against TOS AFAIK).

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